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 Dr. King taught us to believe; President Obama can teach us to win. In making that statement, I am not limiting Dr. King to a wishful dreamer but rather acknowledging that his legacy of belief is an important one. Dr. King taught us to believe in a better world, to believe in ourselves, and most importantly, to believe that we could and would one day change the world. However, Dr. King didn’t win. His family suffered a difficult loss, and the establishment stole his legacy and limited this great man to one speech, that he made five years before his assignation. I read two of Dr. King’s speeches to prepare for this article: (1) “I Have a Dream”, August 28, 1963; (2) “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution”, March 31 1968. Dr. King died on April 4, 1968; his second to last speech is a serious policy critique of the US government that is more akin to a Malcolm X speech. Dr. King was a visionary and his war on Poverty outlined in “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” is President Obama’s road map to greatness.
I am not trying to place President Obama in the class of Dr. Martin Luther King. However, President Obama is a winner and that is important. Far too often Black intellectuals focus on abstract political and moral ideals instead of just winning. I don’t mean some meaningless sport, but winning in life; having a happy family; earning enough money to keep your family in a comfortable lifestyle; working at a job that you choose and love to do, not trapped in some meaningless menial position. Lost to the vast intellect of Dr. Cornell West and numerous other scholars is the importance of a man being able to walk around with pride. That is what President Obama is giving to Black people—pride in winning, pride in family, pride in ourselves.
There are tons of conspiracy theories as to why and how Barack Hussein Obama won the 44th American Presidency. To me this is a sad result of the psychology of Racism that exists within the minds of both Black and White Americans. I believe he won because he is a very strategic man. Barack Obama knows how to win. Make a plan, manage the  execution of said plan, and win. Example number one: Miami Dade County Florida for the last several decades has been dominated by the Republican Party and Miami Dade was the center of the George Bush Al Gore controversy of the 2000 Presidential election. George Bush stole the election of 2000 by having the ballots of several Dade county votes dismissed because of “Hanging Chads”, (click here to read about that in more detail). Candidate Senator Barack Obama sent five of his most senior aides to Florida and had two of them focus specifically on Dade County. The Obama campaign had identified more than a half million African Americans who had registered to vote in Florida but had not cast their ballots in the 2004 election. In 2004 George W Bush won Florida with 380,000 votes. This is strategy, focused on winning, who cares about Idaho and Iowa when you can win Florida. Obama doesn’t spend time complaining about the Electoral College, he is focused on taking advantage of it. Winning, not whining, is what distinguishes Barack Hussein Obama from other Black leaders. (Click here to get a better understanding of the Electoral College.)Strategic example number 2: President Obama outlined his strategy to handle capture Osama Bin Laden on campaign trail. Although ridiculed for his initial vision, he cost effectively utilized the CIA and Army to find and kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan— just as he promised. Right after the announcement I went to the Arab deli right off 125th and Amsterdam, the Yemini man working there said he didn’t believe Bin Laden was dead because if George W. Bush couldn’t do it in eight years how could Obama do it so quickly. My answer was that he is a lot smarter and strategic than George W. Bush could ever be. The subtle racism of his comments astounded me, but strategy will always overcome ignorance. I am confident that President Obama will win the re-election, and will have to utilize a different strategy to do so, but he will get it done because he is a winner. But winning the reelection will not be enough to take President Obama to the level of Dr. Martin Luther King in the annals of American history.
To reach Dr. King’s level of moral leadership President Obama merely needs to follow the anti-poverty blueprint left by Dr. King in “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” As President of the United States, Barack Obama is limited by his responsibilities to the ENTIRE nation. As a private citizen he will be in the unique position to push for real social change. Akin to his predecessors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, President Obama can easily become a globetrotting do-gooder. However, it is the issues he chooses to tackle that will define him. Unlike Carter and Clinton, Obama a son of Africa and his daughters have inherited the legacy of American chattel slavery. He carries the hopes and aspirations of 32 million people with his every breath. To satisfy these hopes and aspirations he must have the bravery of Dr. King, the bravery to stand up to White America, the bravery to speak the truth, and the bravery to refuse to whittle under fire. Dr. King touches on three key areas in this speech: (1) Racism in America; (2) Poverty; (3) Moral Leadership. I see these as the three critical areas that citizen Obama must have the courage to tackle once he is finished being the 44th President of the United States. Although I do believe he will address these in his second term, it will take more than just four years to seriously dent these issues.
 (1) Racism in America
we are challenged to eradicate the last vestiges of racial injustice from our nation. I must say this morning that racial injustice is still the black man's burden and the white man's shame. It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle, the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly, to get rid of the disease of racism. Something positive must be done. Everyone must share in the guilt as individuals and as institutions. The government must certainly share the guilt; individuals must share the guilt; even the church must share the guilt.
(2) Poverty
There is another thing closely related to racism that I would like to mention as another challenge. We are challenged to rid our nation and the world of poverty. . . . I would remind you that in our own nation there are about forty million people who are poverty-stricken. I have seen them here and there. I have seen them in the ghettos of the North; I have seen them in the rural areas of the South; I have seen them in Appalachia. . . . And I was in Newark and Harlem just this week. And I walked into the homes of welfare mothers. I saw them in conditions-no, not with wall-to-wall carpet, but wall-to-wall rats and roaches. I stood in an apartment and this welfare mother said to me, "The landlord will not repair this place. I've been here two years and he hasn't made a single repair." She pointed out the walls with all the ceiling falling through. She showed me the holes where the rats came in. She said night after night we have to stay awake to keep the rats and roaches from getting to the children. . . . Poor people are forced to pay more for less. Living in conditions day in and day out where the whole area is constantly drained without being replenished. It becomes a kind of domestic colony. And the tragedy is, so often these forty million people are invisible because America is so affluent, so rich. Because our expressways carry us from the ghetto, we don't see the poor.
(3) Moral Leadership
One day a newsman came to me and said, "Dr. King, don't you think you're going to have to stop, now, opposing the war and move more in line with the administration's policy? As I understand it, it has hurt the budget of your organization, and people who once respected you have lost respect for you. Don't you feel that you've really got to change your position?" I looked at him and I had to say, "Sir, I'm sorry you don't know me. I'm not a consensus leader. I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I've not taken a sort of Gallup Poll of the majority opinion." Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.
Moral leadership—Black America has not had true moral leadership since the assignation of Dr. King. We had numerous ambulance chasers, and genuflecting elected officials. The Negro preachers of today are more focused on the capitalism of Christianity, than providing true leadership. Gone are the days of Civil Right Marches. We are now in the era of Reverend Wright and T.D Jakes, the Black super church, the million dollar business. There is a Church in the where the Lakers used to play basketball, it is just kind of creepy to me, and contradicts what Jesus was saying but that is another article. Barack Hussein Obama can truly help to fulfill the dream of Dr. King. President Obama can help America truly deal with its racial conflicts, he can make steps to provide global leadership to end poverty and most importantly he can provide true moral leadership, which I feel he has done through his family. Time will tell. Furthermore if America wants to maintain its global leadership it will need to deal with the racial and economic injustices that exist, because they make America weak and uncompetitive, and that is what it is all about right now, competition— competition with Asia, competition with Russia, competition with Europe and only the strong survive.
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